Today at Riverbank we were gathering important information about each member of the class so that at the end of the project we can present each child with their very own Praise Poem! Praise Poems were used by ancient cultures to celebrate great and important people. The idea behind these is to say a big ‘THANK YOU’ to all the children for all their input, ideas and hard work over the last few months and to act as a reminder to them of what they have learnt about themselves, especially as a learner.
We had to think about how nature can reflect our personality. Leon felt he was like a rainbow of jelly beans, happy, colourful and sweet! Sean decided that he was like a monkey because he liked climbing and could be a bit mischievous at times. Quite a few of us felt like we were like the sea but Bartek added more description by saying he was like the waves.
We also had to think back to when we did our treasure maps and remind ourselves of some of the learning treasures we felt we were good at. Encouragingly, many of the class said that they would keep going even if it was hard, therefore showing that they were more resilient than they may have been at the start. Imagination was another key one, as was listening to and understanding others showing that as a class they are sensitive to others and good at showing empathy.
Now that I have collected all the information I will make them into poems which we can read out to each other as a class.
